OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: Crisis at the VA as Benefits Claims Backlog Nearly Tops One Million

It's a "very disturbing"- trend, said Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli during a recent conference call with reporters.

Chiarelli said trying to reduce suicides "is one of the hardest problems"- he's witnessed in his three-decade military career. He added, "There is no single solution"-suicide is a multi-dimensional problem that requires a multi-disciplinary approach to tackle it."-

Chiarelli, and other Army officials, however, fail to address one of the obvious causes behind the spike in suicides: multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are taking a toll on soldiers.

Chiarelli did say that he believed if soldiers had better access to mental health care providers it might reduce the number of suicides.

Although President Obama has proposed increasing the VA's budget by 10 percent to $15 billion and as much as $113 billion for fiscal year 2010 as a way of meeting these challenges, the administration still lacks the manpower, data, and analysis to properly plan for the funding increase, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office.

Shinseki, a staunch advocate of veterans, promised recently that he would take "on the issue of the backlog," but he also admitted that he doesn't understand how it turned into a full-blown crisis.

While veterans groups say they are pleased with Obama's choice of Shinseki and other veterans' advocates to lead the VA, they said they could no longer sit by and wait for relief.

Earlier this year, two veterans advocacy groups asked a federal appeals court to step in and force the VA to immediately tackle the massive benefits claims backlog and implement mental health care plans.

The organizations, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth, who represent the interests of more than 12,000 veterans, said in court documents filed May 1, with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that, in some cases, the VA's failure to provide timely mental health care treatment for veterans "resulted in suicide."-

The problems persist because "VA has not implemented critical provisions, involving suicide prevention, required by its own plans, the veterans advocacy groups alleged in court papers. "As such, services to which VA acknowledges veterans are entitled are being unreasonably delayed, in some instances denied entirely because the delay leads to the death by suicide of individual veterans.

"An injunction compelling VA to implement its own directives is both appropriate and required,"- the advocacy groups said in an appeal brief. "At a minimum, a remand is necessary to remedy the district court's erroneous discovery rulings and "-systemic' evidentiary standard."-

Two years ago, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United for Truth sued the VA alleging some war veterans were turned away from VA hospitals after they sought care for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and later committed suicide.

The veterans groups sought a preliminary injunction to force the VA to immediately treat war veterans who showed signs of or were already suffering from PTSD. In addition, they wanted a federal judge to force the VA to overhaul its internal systems that handle benefits claims and medical services.

But U.S District Court Judge Samuel Conti ruled last summer that he lacked the legal authority to implement those measures. However, Conti did say in an 82-page ruling that it was "clear to the court"- that "the VA may not be meeting all of the needs of the nation's veterans."-

Conti wrote that the veterans groups should get "Congress, the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the adjudication system within the VA, and the Federal Circuit"- to address the matter.

The veterans' groups appeal to the 9th Circuit says Conti's ruling was legally flawed and that he "erred in denying relief to remedy both VA's mental health care delays and the lack of procedural safeguards to challenge those delays."-

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